Beautiful Little Fools(34)

Catherine stared at him. Her eyes were defiant, a piercing shade of green, the color of the grass in Central Park at the height of summer. “You’re wasting your time coming all the way out here, Detective,” she said. “I didn’t kill Mr. Gatsby.” But her voice shook a little, betraying her.

Frank pulled the diamond hairpin out of his pocket and laid it in front of them on the oak table, following her eyes, watching for her reaction. Her mouth formed into the shape of an O. She put her hand to her lips.

“You recognize this, don’t you?” He kept his voice gentle, nonaccusatory.

“I… I…” She picked it up, traced the diamonds with her fingers, and he couldn’t help but notice how different her fingers looked than Daisy’s—her nails were short, her fingers stained and calloused from farm work. She was the kind of woman, rough enough around the edges, that maybe, just maybe, she had it in her to pick up a gun, kill a fellow point-blank. Especially if she knew that fellow had killed her sister. But then, she wasn’t the kind of woman who would own an expensive hairpin, was she? So why was she floundering now, looking at it like she was about to cry? “I don’t recognize it,” she finally said. She refused to meet his eyes again, and her fingers trembled as she held the pin.

She was lying. But he’d been sure Daisy was lying, too. He didn’t understand why they both would be lying.

“What about Daisy Buchanan?” he tried. “You ever see her wear this hairpin?”

She shook her head. “I… I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met Daisy Buchanan.” Her voice faltered a little, her eyes still on the hairpin.

“But you know of her?” he asked.

Catherine didn’t answer, and instead she trailed her fingers again slowly across the diamonds. “This looks like something a person with money would wear,” she finally said. “Look around you, Detective. Do you think I own any diamonds?” Her voice had turned cool, almost smug.

He couldn’t argue with her logic, so he shook his head and chose his words carefully. “Maybe it was a gift?” he said. He watched her as he spoke; her face turned instantly bloodless, making the freckles on her nose appear bolder, almost black. Like poppy seeds on a bagel. He was onto something.

He still didn’t know exactly how or what had happened, but there must be more to Mr. Gatsby running over Myrtle and leaving her there, in the street. What if Catherine understood more than she was letting on? What if her grief was compounded in some way now by her own connection to the man? “Maybe… and I’m just spitballing here,” he said, “but maybe Mr. Gatsby bought that for you?”

She laughed, but the laugh caught in her throat, coming out sounding more like a strangled cry. “That would be impossible.” Her voice verged on defiance now, too, and the color slowly returned to her cheeks. She handed him back the hairpin. “Like I told you, Detective, I never even met Jay Gatsby.”





Catherine 1920

NEW YORK CITY




IT WAS FUNNY THE WAY a place could look exactly the same and be nothing at all like it once was. Though I supposed that same thing was true for people, too. When I looked in the mirror, I still appeared almost unerringly like that girl who’d stepped off the train from Rockvale into Grand Central three years ago: same cute strawberry hair, pink lips, powdered nose to hide those ridiculous, errant freckles.

But inside, I was nothing at all like her any longer. In Rockvale, I’d been a girl, wide-eyed at the possibility of the great big city and being a part of my sister’s—what I once wrongly assumed to be—glamorous life. In New York, I’d become a fighter. A woman. I had a bona fide office job. I made my own money and paid my own rent, and I even saved a little to give to Myrtle so she could buy herself some small nice new things once in a while. And most importantly, I’d had a cause. For nearly three years my roommate, Helen, and I had spent our weekends gathering with the other suffragettes, plotting and protesting and pushing… and at long last, winning. Now the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified. And Helen and I had been spending our weekends more recently fighting for a new kind of freedom. The freedom to just… be. Not someone’s wife or someone’s mother. But just two women, enjoying our lives out in the city. Of late, we’d been exploring speakeasies and drinking all the forbidden gin.

I was thinking about all this as I sat in the very same underground saloon where Myrtle and I had come right after I first arrived in New York, three years ago. I hadn’t been back since. But even though the bar looked very much the same now as it had then—dark and crowded, and with the same tacky red stools off to the side—there were no soldiers all around me (at least not in uniform). And now the gin I held in my hand was most certainly illegal.

“My goodness, Catherine, you haven’t changed a bit in these years, have you?” I turned at the sound of his voice, and I tried to recall what he’d looked like exactly when I’d met him here, once, briefly, three years ago. I remembered only the pale green soldier’s uniform he wore, the Dear John letter in his hands that had devastated him. But I could not recall his face.

When he’d called me out of the blue, last week, I’d barely even remembered those details, until he’d reminded me of our brief encounter. This is Jay Gatsby, he’d said over the telephone. You told me to look you up after the war. I didn’t say anything at first, and his voice sounded somewhat sheepish. I thought maybe… you’d like to get a drink?